“Mommy, let’s put my buffalo nickels and those civil war bullets I found on your blog. That’d probably cause a commotion.”
“Okay, Seth. I’d love to cause a commotion.”
And from there, he started planning a blog post. His requirements: that I accompany him on a walk to the old homesite to metal detect, take pictures of the process, take pictures of some of his recent finds, and then allow him to dictate the post to me and then link to his favorite metal detecting sites.
I give you Seth:
“This photo does not belong here.”
Ginny here. “Yes, it does. Pretty scenery is important.”
“My first signal of the day. But I couldn’t find anything.”
“Another photo that doesn’t belong here.”
“I found a wheat penny on my second signal.”
“The date on the penny was 1953.”
Ginny here. Seth says this one doesn’t belong. I disagree. I thought you might want to see Silas in a handsome pink sweater. Seth says I am not allowed to link to sweaters on his post. But, it’s on my Ravelry page. It was originally Beatrix’s. (I’m not cheating Seth. There’s no link.)
“Bored girls.”
“On the left is a Civil War eagle button. The top row of bullets are three ring mini balls. On the bottom row: unknown, cleaner bullet, musket ball, fired musket ball.”
“Seth where did you find these?”
“I found most of them in the woods around our house.”
“Buckles. My favorites are the little shoe buckles.”
“The top coin is a very corroded war nickel. It’s 35% silver. During the years 1942-1945 nickel was needed for things for the war, so they made the nickels with an alloy of copper, manganese, and silver.
I found both buffalo nickels at the homesite that is pictured in this post. Buffalo nickels are rare and I wish the one with its date worn off still had its date there.”
“The wheat pennies that are clean enough to put in sleeves are in this picture.”
“Wheat pennies were made between 1909 and 1958. My oldest is in this picture and I found it the day that mommy took the pictures in this post. It’s from 1911. There are three tokens in this picture too: one play quarter, one tax token, and a sunoco car token from 1968.”
“These are the old buttons that I’ve found. Guess which ones are the military buttons?”
“There are three rings on the old lipstick tube. The bottom one is sterling silver. The princess pat is a makeup container, and the thing in the top left corner is a watch holder that would have been attached to a belt.”
“These are watch parts. The two bottom left pieces are faces.”
“Most of this silverware is silver plated.”
“The thing in the bottom left corner is a harmonica reed. There are also an old fashioned pen and two pen caps in the middle, an old razor holder, two locks, and the thing in the top left corner is unknown.”
“I got my metal detector for my birthday from my Grandad. It is a Garrett Ace 250
p.s. Dear friends, Seth is hoping to hear from you. If you have any treasure hunting stories of your own to share, we’d love to hear them!
Thank you for sharing your fabulous hobby with us! Your post is very interesting and it’s so cool how you are inspiring other folks to give it a try as well. So much history you are digging up! And how blessed you are with such a generous grandad to help you on your way.
Seth-that is so awesome that you can actually find all those things on a treasure hunt close to your home! You are a blessed boy! And a smart one too!
What a fascinating post! Think I spelled that wrong, sorry. Seth you have found so much great stuff. How fun. Now I want one of those things. Going to have to look into that.
I metal detect too, but its with my dad. I might do it again someday :). also I found an old pen too, I really hope I can find more stuff. I live in Tennessee, and might be able to find Civil war things too! :P.By the way, I am nine years old.
This is amazing! What an incredible adventure! It makes me want to go hunting for treasure too : )
that is an amazing haul! How lucky to have your hobby in a place that has so many discovered and yet to be discovered treasures! I like how you’ve put the coins in covers and labeled them. It’s a good thing to have in place.
Superb! well done. Give us another post when you get more treasures!
thanks for sharing.
Hey Seth, just wanted to let you and your family know that I just found your blog a few days ago and I love it, I am a mom of 5 going on 6 kids and my oldest son who is 10 loves your metal hunting and guess what he wants for his birthday in June????? yep a metal detector!!! Thanks for showing him a new hobby!!!!
Seth,
You have some seriously awesome stuff there. I am blown away by what you have unearthed! We live on a century farm (about 150 years old) and it is amazing the objects that suddenly come to the surface (or are scratched up by either the chickens or the dogs). The coolest thing we have ever found was an old sythe which was dug up by a back hoe doing some work in our yard. How it came to be buried is still a mystery to us. Thank you so much for such a wonderful post.
Cindy
Dear Seth — My oldest son would love to go treasure hunting with you. We borrowed a metal detector once (to try to find our property lot line pins) and he found some old coins. We find lots of railroad spikes/pins too as we live close to the railroad tracks running through Wahoo, Nebraska. Look on a map to find Wahoo! There’s only one!
Dear Seth,
Simply amazing. I wanted to get my 12 year old Nathan a metal detector for Christmas, but got too busy buying other things. Now I wish I did. We have a little place in the woods too, and I think this hobby would be great fun. Thank you for the inspiration:)
Jeannine
Hi Seth! thank you for this amazing post and for sharing your hobby in a so detailed way.
I’m italian and I’m always amazed by the way american people love they’re history and your little metal detecting adventure it’s a wonderfull example of this love. You gave me the inspiration to detect the wood around my house: there’s a lot of dugout there!
Of all the blog posts I read in a day this was by far the most interesting! I loved the little bits of history, you defintely know your subject matter! I have never thought about metal detecting before but this really got my interest going! Nice job!
Great job on your post Seth. My favourites are the token with the car on it, and the ring in the middle of the three. My son loves the pocket watches. Thank you for sharing your adventure.
Thank You Seth! What a fantastic post. You reminded me that my Grandpa used to metal detect and would always find amazing treasures to share with my brother and I. I live in Niagara Falls, Canada, and we have had many battles here over the year (the 200 year celebration of the battle of 1812 is coming up this year!) so there are lots of hidden treasures around our city. I think you have inspired me to try a new hobby with my son! Thanks and good luck in your future detecting!
Wow! I love this post! My son is 9 and a huge history buff. I think he would love to do some metal detecting. We are an Army family and move around about every three years. Right now we are in south Mississippi which I think would be fun to explore. I am heading out to our library and book store for some books that might help us with this new hobby. Do you suggest any? Thank so much for sharing your treasures Seth. It sure looks like you have started a medal detecting trend all over the world!
P.S.- My favorite items of your treasure are the civil war bullets, but all of it is really amazing.
seth- what a great post! my dad collects coins and stashes them away in 3 ring binders in plastic sleeves which hold all of the cardboard mounts that you have. so, i really love all of your findings. i think you should do a post every once in a while updating us on what you have found recently!!!
Hey Seth!I just wanted to tell you I think your finds are pretty awesome, and Gavin is quite jealous of them.He is now asking for a metal detector.Miss you and maybe next time yall go to grandmommys we could go on a hunt. Love you always, Aunt Angie
WOW! What fun! I have a story about my Grandfather. He was originally from St. Louis, but moved to NYC to pursue his career in advertising. Before he moved, he lost his wedding ring raking leaves. Some years later, new owners of the home found his ring. They noticed the initials and were kind enough to do some research and found my grandfather (this was WAY before Google!). Now, my mother wears this ring.
Seth – I wanted to let you know I absolutely loved your post yesterday. I even had my husband read it, because I couldn’t believe what cool treasures you’ve found. I am now determined to save up for some metal detectors for our family.
What a cool hobby! Thank you so much for showing me how much fun it can be!
That looks like a lot of fun and some really interesting finds. I love collecting bits and pieces that I find, but my OH probably wouldn’t let me anywhere near a metal detector as I’d get really excited and probably fill the house!
Great post loved reading through. And fantastic pictures.
The knives forks and spoons got me wondering about the
people who used them, and what kind of meals they
ate with them, really interesting stuff, thanks
for sharing.
dear seth, awesome. dear mom, i think seth needs his own blog.
It was November 1994 and the Republicans had just won control of the House and Senate when B. Clinton was president. My friends and I whooped and hollered in the front yard of their house and I lost my gold Claddagh ring in a pile of autumn leaves.
I looked for it for days in the sunlight, to no avail.
My dear brother, then a Marine, felt sorry for me and went out and rented a metal detector, with his own money, on his own time. He found that ring! It was smashed into an oval I couldn’t wear right away, but the jeweler at the mall easily hammered it back into shape.
I love my metal-detecting brother. Charity and metal detecting meet.
You have a fun hobby and I’d love for my little boys to grow up to have this hobby, too.
Seth, this is such a cool blog post!
I have a few questions for you! How old were you when you started this hobby and how old are you now? I wonder if my boys would like to do something like this! Any tips for people who are just getting started? What kind of metal detector do you use/recommend? Thanks for sharing your treasures with us!
Sincerely,
Deborah Granick
Dear Seth,
I’m really impressed that you’re able to find all these treasures near your home. This is really exciting stuff. I think the belt buckles are my favorite!
I grew up in the Northern California gold country, and my sisters and I used to find Native American arrow heads and grinding stones on occasion.
Thanks for sharing.
Hi Seth,
This is awesome. I have three sons and I can’t wait to show them this post. Thank you for all the great information. Keep up the hunting, and I hope to see more of your treasures in the future.
Hi Seth from Lynn in Australia, thanks for all the pictures I had no idea there was such a thing as a wheat penny or buffalo nickel, why were they called that? keep searching, love reading about you and your family your mum does a great job.
Seth, thank you for sharing your hobby with us. I can see my now 7yr old doing something like this in a couple of years. You really know your stuff! How cool is it that you have all these treasures right in your backyard.
Dear Seth,
What history you are surrounded by! I really enjoyed imagining the men who fired musket balls and wore buckles on their shoes striding (or hiding?) about the area in your homesite! And someone searching for that nickel in the 1930’s – money worth the search back then! I wonder who the tokens belonged to? Did they have lots of fun that day? Ooo, and I wonder what was all locked up out there? I love the watch parts and buttons too… all of it. But the musket balls and buckles are still my faves…
Well done you for searching and digging and sorting, researching and saving and making my day while I imagined the stories of buttons and buckles.
Dear Seth, I think metal detecting is really cool, and I am going to save up to get a metal detector. I’ll probably look at some of the websites that you recommended on your post. My mom is interested in your mom’s blog, and I sometimes look too. It looks like you have a lot of fun with your brothers and sisters. I have a lot of brothers too, but no sisters. And we have a baby coming, but we don’t know what it is. I recommend “The Treasure Seekers” as a good book to read. It’s by E. Nesbit, and there is a sequel to it called “The Wouldbegoods.”
I hope you have fun metal detecting!
Benny
Seth, those things are sooo cool!! You have found so much already! I don’t have a metal detector but one of the coolest things I found in the woods behind our old home in the mountains was a small metal container that used to hold snuff. I found it near an old logging or mining road, so I like to imagine an old miner used to carry it.
Dear Seth,
Your collection is really very impressive. Do you think that metal detecting has made you a big history buff? Do you have a favourite historial era or event that you love to recount?
Thanks for sharing this.
Meagan.
Thank you Seth for this very interesting and informative post. I learned a lot!
Seth – GREAT work! My 9-year-old daughter would love this! She has become interested in collecting coins and went through thousands of them that her grandparents have collected in a big bucket. Metal detecting sounds much more fun…thanks for the inspiration!
You are making me want a metal detector! We have found a few pieces of chain & stuff around here. We live on an old farm…we don’t farm except for the garden…but there are things that break off farm stuff. I doubt we’d find anything this cool! I remember when I was a kid when we’d go camping on Lake Michigan & there were frequently guys there with metal detectors. They found rings & coins & stuff that got buried in the sand! It must have been GREAT when the lake levels went down recently!
Seth, this is fantastic and I hope to see more of your blogposts. You are very good at what you do, everything is in such a fine order and well-placed. Bravo!!!! Thanks to Ginny as well, expecially for being funny.
Seth,
You have an amazing collection. I am going to share this post with my son, he would love it. I will have to buy him a metal detector soon.
wow that is some amazing stuff. i wish we had had a metal detector when we live in our brunswick house. there was a “dump” area in the back of the property, i bet we could have found some good stuff.
Wow Seth, those are some great finds. I am going to forward this to my friend’s son who just got a metal detector last year. He is going to be so jelous that you have a great place to go look for treasures!
My Dad and brother farm and one year the plow unearthed an entire rifle from the civil war – it was in bad shape but still all there. We live in South Dakota so the treasure hunting that my kids do often are for dinasour bones (we have never found any but have friends who have) or for old indian artifacts. My Grandfather used to tell the story of his old friend who did not trust the banks so he buried all of his money in his fence line, only to forget where it was buried. He dug up all of his fences but never found it. My folks now own most of that land, maybe someday that old money will show up.
Seth, I’ve never hunted for treasure, but I love your finds!
Hey Seth 😀
You have an amazing collection here. I love the old forks and spoons, especially the really bendy fork. When I used to help my grandfather dig on his allotment we would find all sorts of things, but I liked the old spoons best, we found quite a few of those.
that is a wonderful collection seth
Seth, this seems like a lot of fun. What neat discoveries. I’ve always wanted a metal detector, but there are oh so many other priorities. Maybe someday, and until then maybe I can do it vicariously through you. 🙂
Dear Seth, We liked the pictures and the story that you made. Metal detecting sounds interesting. We might try it someday.
From,
Jack, age 7 and Harry, age 4 and Neil, age 2 who keeps saying, “Me too.”
Seth- what great treasures. We also metal detect, only we use ours on the beaches of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. We are hoping to try more in the fields and things. The neatest thing I found was an arrowhead the size of my palm, though it was just luck that the metal detector signaled there (we found a penny next to it when we dug)!
Seth, I love your work! Not only do you find wonderful things, but you also know so much about them. I can’t wait to show your post to my dad, he loves finding historical treasures. He was an archaeologist for the Yorkshire Archaeological Trust in the seventies and actually helped to uncover some coins and a sandal for the Jorvic Viking Centre in York. He is also an avid coin collector.
Where I live in Australia the inland areas are mostly uninhabited. Years ago loads of towns existed out there, but as time has gone on people have all left and moved to the more hospitable coastal areas. One of these towns was Adavale in western Queensland. This was where my mum grew up. Her dad had a sheep station called Woomalang and their family lived in a house that only had three walls and dirt floors. She had four brothers and a sister – could you imagine all those people in a house like that?
We visited Adavale a few years ago and there was only a pub and a couple of houses in the town. As we walked around the area we stumbled upon some ruins and bottle dumps. We spent hours searching through the treasures – finding bottles from my great-great-grandparents soda factory, the jug that my aunt used to gather water from the well, as well as many other things. The coolest thing we found was a commercial cigarette tin. It was buried in the dirt and was perfectly intact. Even the paper lining the tin was in mint condition. I think it was so well preserved because it rarely rains out west and the dirt around it had protected it from anything else.
I look forward to seeing more of your treasures on your Mom’s blog. 🙂
Seth, every time I read about you finding such awesome things with your metal detector, I want to run out and buy one for my 6-year-old. We just have a small back yard, but I still think it’d be lots of fun to see what’s out there. My dad has 11 acres, so that might be even more fun!
The one treasure hunting story I can think of to tell you is once, when we lived in Knoxville, TN, we were at a park that had a small beach on the lake. I was walking in the sand when my toe hit something. It was a tooth of some sort. I believe it’s fossilized. I’m not sure what sort of animal it’s from, but I would like to find out. If you want to see the tooth, you can find a few pictures of it starting here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/springtreeroad/2446546765/
Take care and keep hunting!
Best wishes,
Maya
I have to say Ginny, this post was totally fascinating.
Seth: What a lot of history you have around your home. This makes me think that this would be a fun hobby for my girls when they are older but I don’t know if we would find anything quite so fascinating. I am considering getting a metal detector for my 8-year old nephew has a present now – he loves to collect fossils and gems and this would be right up his alley. I do need to ask though – what is a “wheat penny”? I’m Canadian so maybe the term doesn’t apply here.
What an interesting hobby, Seth. This summer my daughter found a piece of glass from a medicine bottle. She googled the name of the pharmacist, and he was in business around 1900. This is a great way to learn history. I worked in a bank so I have a coin collection, but I think it would be more rewarding to go about collecting the way that you do.
Thank you for sharing your hobby here, Seth. Wow! I dream of the kind of treasures and history you are unearthing.
I am reading Five on a Treasure Island with my two oldest children. That is the closest we’ve come to treasure hunting. It is inspiring dreams of treasure, though!